Message From the Director

You may already know that our community has experienced an unusually high incidence of suicide, especially among our youth. Within the past three years, twelve young people from the Rapid City area between the ages of 11 and 19 and seven between the ages of 20 and 26 have taken their own lives. Pennington County has experienced a steady rise in suicide, averaging twenty suicides each year, more than one death to suicide every month. The life-changing effects on family members, friends, and colleagues, as well as on our community can often be difficult to understand as one tries to provide support to those left behind. Our organization and these families are fortunate to have the support of the volunteers on our L.O.S.S. Team. While we work with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office to coordinate a first response team to the scene of a suicide to provide help and support to family members grieving at such a difficult time, we are also available to provide advocacy visits to people who may have lost someone who was living in another area when they died. Should you or someone you know need the extra support that our L.O.S.S. Team provides, please call me at any time and I will send two members of the team to visit with those in need. The team members are survivors of a loss to suicide just like you and mental health professionals who understand what you are going through and can help you get the help that you need.

On the Survivor Services section of our website, you will have the opportunity to read the personal story of a mother who was reached by our L.O.S.S. Team the day her son died, a woman who became active in our suicide prevention efforts only months after loosing her son.  Her story is proof of what we know about the L.O.S.S. Team Program, the most effective means of intervention and support for someone who has experienced the traumatic loss of someone to suicide.  Please consider calling us if you have lost someone close to you to suicide.  If your loved one’s death did not happen in Pennington County within the past four years that our L.O.S.S. Team has been responding to the scene of suicides, we would not have been able to reach you immediately after the death occurred.  If you have not had the help and support that the L.O.S.S. Team provides to people who have lost someone to suicide, please call us. 

I am proud to report that we will be able to improve upon the school-based youth suicide prevention program that we brought to the schools in Rapid City with a special training for school staff members who will become trainers of this unique youth suicide prevention program.  In September those school staff members will go through a train-the-trainer training and then will participate in the training held again during the last week of October.  If you would like to be a community advisor to one of our schools or would like information on the upcoming trainings this fall, please contact me.

World Suicide Prevention Day and Suicide Prevention Week are coming up during the week of September 6-12, 2009.  Throughout the week we will have suicide awareness and educational materials on display at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City.  To commemorate World Suicide Prevention Day, we will host a suicide awareness event on Thursday evening, September 10th at the Dahl.  Our goal is to join people worldwide to raise awareness of the incidence of suicide.  As a small, non-profit organization that relies solely on private donations to maintain its programs with volunteers assisting in keeping the L.O.S.S. Team reaching suicide survivors, we will also be asking people to help us in our efforts by donating to the organization.  Even if you cannot make a monetary donation to the organization, please still join us to learn more about what our organization has accomplished during the past nine years that it has been operating and what we plan to do in the future.  Maybe you can join us by volunteering in those efforts to expand upon the services that we provide and raising awareness, because “Suicide Prevention Is Everybody’s Business.”  With the theme of this event entitled, “Together There’s Hope” we want to instill hope that together we can make a difference and work to prevent another life lost to suicide, just as the mother whose story you can read about has a goal of trying to do. 

Sincerely,
Stephanie Schweitzer Dixon, Community Services Director